Selling to Your Community without Overselling – Ep 11

Today is all about sell, sell, sell! In this episode, we discuss selling to your community and highlight the tactics to engage your community with your products without overselling. We also discuss the truth that there will be people in your community that use the platform to sell their ideas and products, and how you should deal with that.

Episode Highlights:

But, what if I hate selling?

Even if selling isn’t something you like to do or something you fear, it’s important to let people know how you can serve them in your community.

It’s important to know what your community wants and how to fulfill their needs. Always be on the lookout for the challenges your group say they are having. Sharing your knowledge and build products that fill a need in your community. By doing this you make it less about selling and more about serving.

What should I do when others try to sell/promote in my group?

Other people selling within your community can become an issue. People should be qualified and on your mailing list or participating in a group challenge so that the purpose of the community is clear.

Published guidelines in your community are important, so that members know what’s acceptable when it comes to selling or promoting. Facebook will allow guidelines to be pinned and easily available.

It’s not as simple to share guidelines in Twitter, but Twitter chats have an unspoken rule that you don’t go into a chat and heavily sell or promote. It becomes the moderator’s responsibility to handle a situation where that’s happening. Some moderators create a tweet with the “rules” and share it at the start of each chat.

Delete posts that violate the ground rules. Be ready and willing to remove and ban people from the group if necessary. Be firm because your community members rely on you to take charge and make the community a pleasant environment.

Facebook has a new feature that allows you to mute a person, essentially putting them into a temporary “time out” and can be used as a way to manage groups, an alternative to permanently remove someone.

Creating a time and place when it is okay for people to talk about their projects in your communities is a smart idea to incorporate into your guidelines so everyone has a dedicated time to share and be heard. It’s also a good way to find out what people in your community are doing.

How can I get people to convert to paying customers?

What are some tactics to get people to convert from your group as a community member to being more involved? Build a mailing list, ask your community what they want, offer a free version to help people realize what they don’t know, sell your idea to validate it and do a joint venture (with another influencer) or create an affiliate program to build your community.

Ask your followers in social media to join your mailing list. You have a better chance that people will see your message with an email vs. a social media post, regardless of the amount of followers you have.

Ask what the community needs and offer content and products that cater to the community. The more they are invested in the product, the more likely they are to purchase a product that’s been tailored to them and share your product with others.

Sell an idea first to validate it and get a feel for the success of it. Before investing time and creating content, share the idea with the community to see if there’s interest in the product. If there is significant interest, build the content and invest the time. Starting with an outline is a good way to start and promote an idea. Ask your community to buy and incentivize them to share with friends.

But, what if I don’t have a large community, yet?

If you haven’t yet built a large community, create a joint venture with someone who is aligned with what you’re doing. It’s a good opportunity to get in front of their community, gain interest and build your own community.

Creating an affiliate promotion is a good way to generate a stream of income for yourself. Alternative, reach out to friends and colleagues to ask them to share your product, offering them an affiliate percentage.

Links, Tools & Apps Mentioned in this Episode:

Call-To-Action

If you have a group, review current guidelines in light of this episode and revise or make a guideline post, if you don’t have one yet. If you don’t have a group yet, go to a few groups in which you’re already a member and see if they have guidelines, read them and compare. How would you do it differently?

You can check out our pinned post in the new Communities That Convert Facebook group. We will extend the conversation from each episode and deliver bonus content. Sign up for our email list at http://bit.ly/CTCVIP to get an invitation to join.